Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920In this penetrating examination of African American politics and culture, Paul Ortiz throws a powerful light on the struggle of black Floridians to create the first statewide civil rights movement against Jim Crow. Concentrating on the period between the end of slavery and the election of 1920, Emancipation Betrayed vividly demonstrates that the decades leading up to the historic voter registration drive of 1919-20 were marked by intense battles during which African Americans struck for higher wages, took up arms to prevent lynching, forged independent political alliances, boycotted segregated streetcars, and created a democratic historical memory of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Contrary to previous claims that African Americans made few strides toward building an effective civil rights movement during this period, Ortiz documents how black Floridians formed mutual aid organizations—secret societies, women's clubs, labor unions, and churches—to bolster dignity and survival in the harsh climate of Florida, which had the highest lynching rate of any state in the union. African Americans called on these institutions to build a statewide movement to regain the right to vote after World War I. African American women played a decisive role in the campaign as they mobilized in the months leading up to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. The 1920 contest culminated in the bloodiest Election Day in modern American history, when white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan violently, and with state sanction, prevented African Americans from voting. Ortiz's eloquent interpretation of the many ways that black Floridians fought to expand the meaning of freedom beyond formal equality and his broader consideration of how people resist oppression and create new social movements illuminate a strategic era of United States history and reveal how the legacy of legal segregation continues to play itself out to this day. |
Contents
| vii | |
| xi | |
| xxi | |
THE PROMISE OF RECONSTRUCTION | 7 |
THE STRUGGLE TO SAVE DEMOCRACY | 31 |
WE ARE IN THE HANDS OF THE DEVIL Fighting Racial Terrorism | 59 |
TO GAIN THESE FRUITS THAT HAVE BEEN EARNED Emancipation Day | 83 |
TO SEE THAT NONE SUFFER Mutual Aid and Resistance | 110 |
LOOKING FOR A FREE STATE TO LIVE IN | 126 |
Other editions - View all
Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White ... Paul Ortiz Limited preview - 2005 |
Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White ... Paul Ortiz Limited preview - 2005 |
Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White ... Paul Ortiz Limited preview - 2005 |
Common terms and phrases
activists African American women African American workers African Americans Afro-American April August ballot black Floridians black women black workers boycott Christian Recorder Church citizenship Club Colored Citizen Daytona democracy Democratic Election Day Emancipation Day employers federal Florida Metropolis Florida movement Florida State Archives Florida Times-Union folder frame freedom Gadsden County Gainesville Governor History Ibid Institute News Clipping Jacksonville James Weldon Johnson January Jim Crow July June Key West Klux Klan Knights of Pythias Ku Klux Klan labor leaders lodge lynching March Mary McLeod Bethune NAACP Papers National Negro November Ocala Ocoee October officials organized Palatka Pensacola political poll tax race racial railroad Reconstruction reel registered to vote reported Republican Party segregation September sheriff slave slavery South Southern struggle Tallahassee Tampa tion Tuskegee Institute Union University Press violence voter registration W. E. B. Du Bois wages white Floridians white supremacy William York Age
Popular passages
Page xiii - No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined.
References to this book
Deliver the Vote: A History of Election Fraud, an American Political ... Tracy Campbell No preview available - 2005 |
Encyclopedia of American Race Riots: Greenwood Milestones in African ... Walter C. Rucker,James N. Upton No preview available - 2006 |